


Something More Beautiful

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [195]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Bucky in a corset, Corsetry, Jewelry, M/M, Multi, Post-Civil War, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 05:29:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16780561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: James wears something unexpected out of the house.





	Something More Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crowgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/gifts).



> Prompt: Crowgirl sent me [this](http://seashells-and-bookshelves.tumblr.com/post/178802151604/mariaslozak-fashionologyextraordinaire) and [this](http://seashells-and-bookshelves.tumblr.com/post/178673108758/an-edwardian-platinum-opal-and-diamond-pendant) and in their face, I was powerless.

The corset was made of whalebone and impossibly downy-soft silk; a caress, as it were, with some teeth. Wearing it was never a comfortable affair and James told himself--and Tony and Steven, when prodded--that this was why he never did so out of the house.

Never had, that is, until this night.

There had been a supper at the House Romanov, an intimate affair for 25: roast duck and stuffing, fried oysters and thick collard greens; breads and rice and gravy so plentiful that the table had seemed to bow with it, the weight of its beautifully plated bounty. The Romanovs were prone to extravagance anyway--James had never taken a meal there in which less than three different meats had been served--but Christmas, it seemed, brought out an especial sense of abundance by which he, so few years now separated from the gnawing pain of constant hunger, could not help but be amazed.

“Darling,” Tony had murmured in his ear as he leaned over to pour James more wine, “stop gaping at your plate, please, and just eat.”

It hadn’t helped matters that James was wearing the corset, could not for one breath escape that fact. There was no way, he knew logically, that anyone about the table could look at him and have any hint as to what his well-cut dinner jacket and starched white shirt concealed. Only he could feel the catch of lace against his bare chest; only he could feel tight stretch of its bite. None of their friends and frequent companions could have any idea what lay beneath.

After all, they’d been in New Orleans nearly two years and no one had guessed their secret or had, James though, even fathomed to question the nature of their living arrangements. Some of that was the state of upset that still reigned despite the reunification of their young nation; for many in the city, it was hard to shake the sense of unease the war had washed in, the awareness that so much of the lives they’d built in the bosom of the river was not so permanent as it had once seemed. Times were much better now, the money back to flowing in like the tide, but no one questioned the economic necessity of two former soldiers being graced by Tony Stark’s charity. That both James and Steven were gentlemen by breeding if not by birth helped matters considerably, as did the fact that they’d saved the life of one of the city’s favorite sons in the heat of Antietam, a bloody, terrible battle that had demanded so much sacrifice. In the veritable absence of eligible young men in the post-war era, then, people like the Romanovs and the Bartons and even the Odinsons were only too pleased to have James and Steven at their tables and their daughters of age placed demurely if strategically at their side, much to Tony’s amusement.

“Face it,” he’d said late one evening as they tore at each other’s clothing, their heads humming with the evening’s fine wine, “the whole lot is devoted to the notion of marrying you two off.”

“Well,” Steven had said, reaching like hungry spirit to tug at Tony’s long, dark hair, “that’s their bad luck, isn’t it? They don’t know we’re already taken.”

That their servants hadn’t gossiped was something of a miracle, James thought; the mystery of three masters who each had their own chambers but managed somehow each night to rumple only one bed. If they’d been in New York, in the world James grew up in, the whole of their social circle would have been all too aware that something was out of order, at least. But Tony had laughed when James brought it up; laughed harder when James got indignant and pinned Tony beneath him on the drawing room floor, trying to stop the man’s amusement with a glare and then his hands and then his mouth. Which had only led to further trouble and no answers--not until, at least, they were both spent.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Tony had said, his voice reedy and deliciously breathless. “This is New Orleans, not New York. We’re far older here; we’ve seen more of humanity and we’re far more aware of the panoply of its shades.”

James had kissed Tony’s throat, nuzzled with some eagerness at the flash of come he found there, evidence of his passionate release. “I feel as though I should be insulted. On behalf of my people at least.”

Tony chuckled. “Hardly. Though that you’ve chosen to take advantage of me down here, my darling, with only two doors between us and the world suggests that it’s not discovery that you fear.”

Against his wishes, he’d blushed, and that had only made Tony laugh louder. “James,” he’d said when he recovered himself, his mouth pressed with great affection against James’ hair, “the superior nature of our city aside, Jarvis’ loyalty is absolute. More solid than any granite, fiercer than any storm. Should there be even a hint of whisper in this house, he’d quash it faster than a junebug, be sure of that. And besides, sweet, our servants are paid better than anybody this side of good sense; they know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

So no one at the Romanovs’ table that night knew what lay between the three of them, or indeed had ever had occasion to ask. That James wore a corset, then, a thing made for women, for creatures with soft curves even as he backslapped Colonel Odinson over brandy or beat Miss Romanov handily at a hand of whist or gently teased old Mrs. Barton about her son’s upcoming marriage was so far outside of the possible that it was something, James knew, that could hardly have been fathomed.

And yet here he stood, secreted from the world once again, unwrapped carefully from his evening clothes to stand bared before the eyes of the two men he loved above all others. He was still him, the same James Barnes who not an hour before had been the very model of propriety; and yet the man who blinked back at him from the mirror was a picture of indiscretion--a man wearing the most intimate and deceptively delicate of women’s underclothes.

“Look at you,” Steven said, his voice filled with something like wonder. “My god, Buck.”

James blushed, as much from the nickname as from the praise. “What?”

Steven stroked his shoulder. “You better thank providence I didn’t see you in this before we left. We might not have made it out of this house. Did you know he had stockings on, Tony?”

“Mmmm,” Tony said from his close station at James’ other side. “No I did not. But what a wonderful surprise.”

A kiss on James’s cheek now, the straw scratch of Steven’s beard. “You are so lovely,  _ acushla _ , that it hurts my heart.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, “but something’s missing.” His fingers found James’ spine; his reflection smirked when James shivered. “Right here. At your throat. A bit of sparkle here is what our boy needs, don’t you think, Steven?”

“Oh,” Steven said, his blue eyes wide in the mirror. “Yes.”

Tony stepped away and James turned his head, raised his eyebrow full force at Steven. 

“Shhh,” Steven said softly. He reached up and brushed the hollow of James’s throat. “It’s a good thing. You’ll like it.”

“Close your eyes,” Tony said a moment later. “And bend your head down for me. There, that’s right. Be still.”

James felt a slip of weight around his neck, solid and cool; heard the click of a catch at the base.

“Good,” Tony said. “Good boy. Now raise up now. Look.”

In the mirror, James saw a man with twins stars at his throat, a colorful glisten, as if someone had trapped the warm summer sun.

“Those are opals,” Steven said. “The ones the Maharajah gave me, remember?”

“After you saved him from getting robbed,” James said. The words came out like heavy cream. “During your Grand Tour. You were in London, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” Steven touched the gems, arranged in a teardrop shape of sorts, the smaller set just below the larger. “He was too generous. I told him that then. But now, seeing these on you”--he made a hot, soft sound--“I’m goddamn grateful he was. These were made for you, Bucky.”

Then there was another hand on the necklace, the gentle sweep of Tony’s clever thumb--not over the opals but around their fat edges where a shimmer of diamonds lay curled around each like a thin line of contented cats.

“And these,” Tony said, “these were my mother’s. And her mother’s before her. So too this seed pearl at the tip here, see?” He sighed. “You’re wearing my history,  _ cherie _ . Both of ours.”

James was shivering now. He was hard and it was difficult to breathe and he felt as if he were being something by satin and lace, as if the teeth of the whalebone were the only things holding a storm of emotion in.

“Why?” he said. It was all he could muster.

Tony scratched gently at his chest, his palm catching the top of the corset. “Because, dear James, we both agreed that you deserve something more beautiful than a ring.”

“Something,” Steven said, “that’s as exquisite as you are.” He bit gently at James’ ear. “As exquisite and as unique.”

In the mirror, James saw the tears on his cheeks; saw too the slip of Tony’s hand to sit on his stomach, in the slim stretch between where his corset ended and his garter belt began, tucked beneath the trembling arch of his cock.

“May we have you like this?” Tony asked. His eyes met James’s in the glass, snapping as always but full now of great and abiding affection. “May we please you without taking any of your accoutrements off?”

James’s mouth moved, he saw it, but no sound came out, so close was his throat with all that he felt. So he nodded instead; first once and then a dozen times until he knew nothing but the sweep of their hands, the heady press of their mouths on his skin.

“Yes,” he managed at last as Steven tangled his hair in big, eager hands, as Tony growled softly and tugged at the swell of his balls. “Yes, my dears,  _ yes _ .”

They had a plan for him, it seemed. When did they not? He helpless between them, caught between the slick stretch of Steven’s fingers and the sweet, tight cavern that was Tony’s fist--and then, dear god help him, Tony’s mouth.

He cried out and leaned back against Steven’s chest, the inexplicable scrape of his dress shirt and trousers against James’ bare skin, the perfect, painful shove of those fingers deep, deep inside. He stared wide-eyed at the picture they made of him, framed by the edges of the glass and by his lovers’ bodies, the bright peal of the necklace ever there at his throat, bobbing with every gasp.

“Tony,” Steven groaned, his voice like a hurricane, “Tony, I have to. I can’t wait.”

A brief respite from that quick, eager suck. “Go on,” Tony rasped. “Fuck him.”

“Oh, god,” James said, the words rising from somewhere ancient and primal, something older even than the land on which the city stood. “Please fuck me. Please.”

There was a fumble of fabric and a great, needy sigh and then James was full, James was filling, James was whipped into a glorious, drowning frenzy. In the glass, the stars at his throat bounced, banging heavy against his skin, and he could see Steven’s grip on his hips, the way his own body was torn between canting back to take Steven and shoving forward to take Tony. He held onto both and licked their names from the air, each breath now coming anxious and sweet.

“Oh,  _ acushla _ ,” Steve murmured. “He who sets my heartbeat. Look at you, my beautiful one. Look at you.”

Their gazes crashed in the glass and Steven shattered, his body freezing as unseen he spilled and James found himself pulling at Tony’s hair, at the sudden, frenzied suck, the stroke of long fingers down the curve of his inner thigh.

Steven’s mouth found his neck. “That’s right,” he said. “Just like that. Be a good boy for Tony and come. Then he can bend you over the bed in your pretty little corset and fuck you proper full, too.”

James screamed, his eyes swimming with diamonds, his heart sunken with stars, and he lost himself to everything but the two men that he loved; it was their hands and theirs alone that kept him safe now, that held all that was wrong with the world, all the evils they’d all seen, far away back.

“I love you,” he said when Tony kissed him, his lips muddled with the sweet sour of James’s own spunk.

“I love you,” he said when Steven stretched out beside him, stroking his hair and his shoulders as Tony slammed into him, each thrust bringing joy and stealing breath.

“I love you,” he said at last when they freed him, untied each ribbon and slid off his stockings and took him naked--or very nearly--into bed.

Tony slipped an arm around him and touched the necklace, lingered over its length. “You should wear this out of the house sometime, hmmm?”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“So everyone would know who you belong to.” A kiss at the base of his neck. “That you’re taken. That you’re not marrying anyone’s daughter, period.”

Steven laughed and rubbed the sound against James’s mouth. “Territorial, isn’t he?”

James nipped at him. “And you’re not, I suppose?”

“I never said that.” Another rub of lips, one that bloomed into a proper kiss. “I’m just selfish, that’s all. I don’t like the idea of anyone else getting to see you this way.”

“I wore the corset out.”

Steven shook his head. “That’s different. That’s clothes, only something you wear. This is--”

“What?”

Tony touched the necklace again, bolder this time, his palm pressed against its length. “What our fair captain is trying to say, I think, is: this is us. And he doesn’t want to share that with anybody. Is that it?”

“Yes,” Steven said, tugging Tony’s hand to his lips, laying his kiss over the wrist. “That’s it exactly."

They each kissed him then, disagreement happily discarded in favor of affection, and as the hours of the night waned and the candles began to spit, they spoke softly to one another, these three, and found pleasure in each other’s company, in the promise of a shared future, and finally, at last, in sleep.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Planning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16784476) by [Crowgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl)




End file.
